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5 Reasons You Shouldn't Buy An iPad Mini

The dust is settling on today’s expected announcement by Apple of an iPad mini, a downsized 7.9″ sibling of the 100-million selling iPad product line. While the announcement itself came as little surprise, it was the technical specifications of the device that may have shaken the Apple faithful, and left Android fans rejoicing. Here are five compelling reasons you should hold off buying this new slice of Apple hardware.

1: The Resolution

Apple’s hardware engineers get all the credit in the world; the iPad mini is a thin, beautiful piece of kit. However, the company was eager to draw direct, wholly unflattering comparisons to the Google Nexus 7. I have some comparisons of my own to share.

Visit the official iPad Mini product page, and you’ll see it touted as being “Every Inch An iPad.” Unfortunately the 7.9″ screen’s 1024 x 768 resolution is identical to the iPad 2 — a device now two generations old following Apple’s unveiling of a fourth-generation iPad today. (The iPad 3 boasts a Retina display of 2048 x 1536.)

Google’s Nexus 7 Android tablet has 1280 x 800 resolution in a 7” screen. Notably, the Nexus 7 display packs in 216 PPI (pixels-per-inch) compared to the iPad Mini’s 163 PPI. I find it baffling that Apple is aggressively pushing their Retina technology (and rightly so), while simultaneously producing what is clearly an inferior display experience for their iPad mini. Newcomers to the iPad will not be impressed, and existing iPad owners will be underwhelmed should they choose to purchase the iPad Mini as a second device.

Oh, even Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD has a better resolution.

2: The Price

Arguably, $299 would have been the sweet spot. The actual MSRP of $329, however, is Apple asking the usual premium price — but this time for an inferior product. Google’s Nexus 7 is priced at $249 for the 16GB model, and the search giant includes a $25 Google Play Store voucher. Add to this a noisy rumor mill pointing to an imminent price drop on the Nexus 7, and you have a clearer picture of why Apple was deriding its closest competitor at today’s keynote.

It used to be enough for Apple to pull back the curtain on a new product, inspire oohs and ahhhs, and watch the pre-orders roll in. Now the competition is so fierce that they’ve subjected themselves to dirty marketing.

Google's Nexus 7 Tablet

3: The Planned Obsolescence Factor

Apple has now demonstrated they have no qualms about introducing a new revision of their products every six months. Much to the chagrin of new iPad 3 owners, Apple has seemingly reduced their yearly iterative cycle to a six-month one. With the 4th generation iPad available next month, it’s nothing less than a slap in the face to Apple loyalists. We should expect a similar treatment of the iPad Mini. By summer 2013, expect Apple to roll out an iPad Mini 2 with a Retina display and a more competitive pricetag.

4: The A5 Chip

I’d be kinder to Apple if the hardware inside the iPad mini matched the hype they’re trying to generate. Again, crucial to the pricing discussion is Apple’s inclusion of their dual-core A5 chip. This is the same chip powering the iPad 2 – a device now two generations old — and the iPod Touch. Furthermore, Apple’s A5X chip found in iPad 3 (aka “New iPad”) has a quad-core graphics processor compared to the A5’s dual-core graphics processor.

Google’s Nexus 7 manages extraordinary battery life even with the inclusion of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor, which beats the A5 chip handily in GeekBench tests, and destroys it in raw graphical processing power. Again, something Apple neglected to point out in their comparisons.

5: Windows 8 RT (The Wildcard)

Look, I acknowledge that Android is a splintered platform, but don’t expect Amazon and Google to give up the fight so easily. Both companies will continue to iterate on their respective signature tablets, and they will do so with extremely aggressive pricing. But it’s actually Microsoft‘s Windows 8 that may throw a curve ball into this tablet game. We’ve seen a myriad of companies (like Dell and Asus) debut inspired tablet/ultrabook convertibles based around Windows 8.

The “RT” variant of that operating system (ARM-processor powered) is perfect for tablets 7 inches and larger. It’s only a matter of time before hardware manufacturers release 7″ Windows 8 RT tablets. In fact, if Microsoft’s in-house Surface finds a decent audience, we may even see smaller tablets coming from Redmond in the near future.

Here’s the bottom line: Apple is a brilliant technology company. Some may call them a lifestyle company. The iPad (revolutionary when it was released) deserves every bit of praise and success it has garnered thus far. But today, Apple didn’t debut an innovative product. Today they debuted a clone which is inferior to the vast majority of products it’s attempting to copy.

*Disclaimer: Readers will find that I have an Asus Transformer Prime Android tablet and an iPad 3 in my office. The Android tablet is a dust magnet, while I use my iPad religiously. Just something to consider before commenting…

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Comments

Pretty much made the same points on my own tech blog, other than the 5mp camera the iPad mini offers no reason to get one over the Google Nexus 7 unless you are a die hard for the iTunes app store ecosphere which is still better than Androids market as far as # of quality apps/games.

The price should have been lower to be an effective competitor as well, and rumors have it the Google Nexus 7 32GB version will be $249 very soon.

Justin, you are wrong so please update your blog. I hate iTunes so I jailbroke my iPad and plan to do the same with the mini. My two Android tabs blow….big time. There is ZERO support and updates on those things. I’m sure the Nexus will be better in a couple years but I still have a bad taste in my mouth after spending so much for crap. I will have to see a year or two of updates (to the actual devices by the manufacturers, not just to the Android OS where the manufacturers turn the other way).

For me it was the Amazon Instant Video environment. NO SUPPORT on Android except Fire devices, and better support on iPad than on Fire. I buy the majority of my media from Amazon, not Apple or the Play Store, so iPad mini is really a no-brainer for me. I’ve owned five 7″ Android tablets, including the vaunted Nexus 7, and they are all lacking.

The disclaimer says it all. As attached as I was to my iPod Touch 4, the iPod Touch 5 at a hundred more offers 4 times the storage space (32gb) plus twice the thinness, lightness and speed, making it an irresistible purchase, a steal! If a 4″ iPod out-strips, out-performs every 6″ tablet on the market, and is a screaming bargain at $300, I’ve got to see an Apple 8″ tablet for $50 more as another clearcut victory for Apple. Resolution specs mean nothing on screens this small. Performance plus size is all!

Apple’s promotions–mangling “fun,” showing countless expensive Touches bouncing merrily on the ground, are an insult to the product and its customers. The “new, colorful” hand-strap is a joke or worse: an accident waiting to happen. The company makes marketing mistakes in proportion to its products–at least since the departure of S. Jobs.

This article is complete rubbish. According to the author, the iPad mini should have offered: - A 1080p display - A sub-$300 price point - A5X chip at the minimum - Dual boot to Windows RT

Oh, yeah, let’s not forget that he thinks Apple has this great conspiracy to make their products useless almost immediately because they *gasp* refresh their products yearly. The iPad 3 refresh was a one-off event, obviously, so that they could phase in Lightning. Meanwhile, the competition offers a new flavor of the week….weekly.

The resolution is what it is for the sake of a coherent app ecosystem, and you know it. iOS’s strength lies is the abundance of well-tailored applications, and introducing yet another resolution makes that much work for developers, and impedes the ability to get timely updates and new apps.

Furthermore, resolution is but one of many metrics for gauging a screen’s performance. There’s brightness, black levels, accurate color reproduction, battery efficiency, separation distance between the glass and the LCD, and on, and on. You are clueless if you think that consumers are going to gripe about this screen en masse.

This is either shamless clickbait, or it’s the your attempt to support a short position. Clearly you’re sour because your iPad 3 is no longer the latest and greatest, but you’re clueless if you don’t think that this is THE must-have product for Holiday 2012. They will sell about 40 of these for anyone else’s Windows 8 tablet entrant.

My point is that your expectations (aka the 5 failings that caused you to write this article, most likely well in advance of today’s announcement) are completely out of whack.

A yearly refresh cycle is a bad thing? Samsung et al. iterate devices at least quarterly. We’ve seen that Apple is EXTREMELY profitable with this type of strategy. What are you suggesting? 2-yr refresh cycle? That they never refresh anything, so that it’s never obsolete?

It has last-gen hardware? Let’s see if that makes any difference in real-world use, before stating it so matter-of-factly. The Nexus 7 lags/hangs up/crashes much more regularly than the iPad 2. Trust me, I have both.

Perhaps the most baffling is your mention of the price being too high, and then in the same article, talking about Windows 8. You are grossly misinformed, if you think that ANY Windows 8 tablet maker will be able to hit a $329 price point any time soon. On the Android side, note that the Nexus 7 with 16GB is $250, not $199.

Also, it’s not just hot sales that make Apple so valuable, it’s customer satisfaction and the associated buyer loyalty. Windows 8 has been a complete clusterf*** thus far. Normal people simply can’t figure it out without getting extremely frustrated. The iPad Mini will be as much of a crowd-pleaser as any current Apple device. It will continue Apple’s reign as the industry gold standard for customer satisfaction.

A yearly refresh cycle for a premium product isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A 6 month refresh cycle for a premium product is.

Samsung products are following the ~1 year refresh cycle for products. They have slightly different products for different companies (T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc.) that aren’t necessarily announced at the same time; maybe this is why you think there’s “a new one every week.” It’s also possible that because the Android network is so much larger than Apple, you lump them all in together–and forget that HTC is a very different company than Samsung is a very different company than Google is very different than Asus.

If you enjoy paying full-price for a car that’s 2-years old, that’s your prerogative. I won’t. I also won’t pay full price for a 2-year old iPad that will be replaced sometime in the next 6-12 months.